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How To Paint Skies & Clouds In Watercolor

Learn How To Paint Skies and Clouds With Easy Techniques

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

  • The three textures for watercolor painting and how to create them
  • The graded wash and using it for simple, beautiful clear skies
  • Combining two basic watercolor techniques for soft, dimensional clouds

Clouds and skies are part of just about every landscape painting. Usually they are the backdrop just there to provide a sense of space, distance, and light. 

They are best handled fluidly and directly – get it in and leave it alone! 

This lesson series shows how to get great looking clouds and skies everytime. It’s best to follow the lessons in order – from 1 to 6. Each builds on the previous lessons helping you build skill and confidence. 

Lesson requires a WATERCOLOR ESSENTIALS or MASTERCLASS Membership.

Click the links above to learn more.

Full Length Lessons

Paint A Summer Sky & Clouds

Skies and clouds are endlessly varied – color, value, shape and more change continually and often dramatically in the course of a day – or an hour. This lesson shows how to paint them, using some textural variety for visual interest.

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Composing A Sky

This lesson uses basic techniques combined together and worked quickly for a great summer skyscape.
The strength of this painting is not in the techniques, but a composition that features the clouds in a way that creates the sense atmosphere and distance.

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Towering Clouds In A Summer Sky

Soft texture dominates in sky and clouds. In this lesson, you’ll use the wet-in-wet technique to create the soft textures and the subtle shifts of light to shade needed to represent these towering clouds.

The most difficult part of this painting is in reserving white space and using it to create contrasts of rough texture along the edges of the clouds.

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